Paul Tucker on Unelected Power: The Quest for Legitimacy in Central Banking and the Regulatory State

Central bankers have emerged from the financial crisis as the third great pillar of unelected power alongside the judiciary and the military. They pull the regulatory and financial levers of our economic well-being, yet unlike democratically elected leaders, their power does not come directly from the people. Unelected Power lays out the principles needed to ensure that central bankers, technocrats, regulators, and other agents of the administrative state remain stewards of the common good and do not become overmighty citizens. Like it or not, unelected power has become a hallmark of modern government. This critically important book shows how to harness it to the people’s purposes.

What is the regulatory state?

It’s a term that has come to be used to describe a host of government bodies that regulate particular economic sectors or the public more generally to protect, say, investors, the environment, consumers, workers, and so on. In a rudimentary form it has existed for a long time, going back to the 19th century and beyond. Going wider, Americans sometimes refer to the administrative state, meaning the evolution of government beyond a world of legislators and courts to one in which the executive branch makes policy and is divided up into departments, agencies, bureaus, commissions, and so on.

What are Independent agencies, and why do they matter?

They are government organizations that are not under the day-to-day control of elected politicians, whether in the executive branch or the legislature. Obvious examples today are the central banks, such as the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, and the Bank of England, but also various regulators insulated from ongoing political control. By no means all agencies in the administrative state are independent. On both sides of the Atlantic, many are under the control of cabinet ministers or subject to annual budget approvals from the legislature, which makes them sensitive to politicians’ sentiments and whims. Independent agencies are distinctive in that politicians can control them only by amending or repealing legislation.

That sounds problematic in a democracy. Is it?

That’s the point of the book. The way I’ve just described them it could be a hell of a problem. Imagine an independent agency that had lots of powers but only the vaguest purpose and objective. Who would be able to tell whether it had succeeded in its mission if it set its own goal posts?! That’s at odds with some of our deepest values: just as “no taxation without representation” was a rallying cry a couple of centuries’ ago, we might just as well demand “no regulation without representation.”

Are central banks a particular problem?

They have become the poster boys and girls of today’s unelected power. Compared with what happened after the Great Depression in the 1930s, when it was politicians who did the heavy lifting, this time it has been central banks that have led the way in reviving the economy and redesigning the financial system. They have used their balance sheets on a truly gigantic scale to influence credit conditions in lots of markets, and have been given lots of new regulatory powers. They are more powerful than ever before, ranking with the judiciary and military as a third core pillar of unelected power.

Do people object to all this?

Yes, but in rather different ways in different countries. In the US, since the New Deal there have been critics who object that regulatory agencies violate the values associated with the separation of powers or even the Constitution itself. In France, not long ago the parliament passed legislation to put more structure around such agencies. In the UK, there is episodic antagonism to government by ‘experts.’

And on central bank independence, there have been challenges in the German constitutional court and attempts to pass reforming legislation in the US Congress.

So what is the solution?

Our democracies need norms for whether and how to delegate to independent agencies that measure up to the deep political values of our democratic, liberal republics: the various values of democracy, rule of law, constitutionalism. My book proposes and defends just such a set of Principles for Delegation, as I call them. They come in two broad parts: criteria for whether to delegate, and precepts for how to delegate.

Criteria for whether to delegate: I argue that a policy function should not be delegated to a truly independent agency unless (1) society has settled preferences; (2) the objective is capable of being framed in a reasonably clear way; (3) delegation would materially mitigate a problem of credible commitment; and (4) the policymaker would not have to make big choices on society’s values or the distribution of its resources.

Precepts for how to delegate: (1) the agency’s purposes, objectives and powers should be clear and set by elected legislators; (2) its decision-making procedures should be set largely by legislators and should accord with the values of the rule of law; (3) the agency itself should publish the operating principles that will guide its exercise of discretion within the delegated domain; (4) there should be transparency sufficient to permit accountability to the legislature for the agency’s stewardship of the regime and, separately, for politicians’ framing of the regime; and (5) it should be clear what (if anything) will happen, procedurally and/or substantively, when the edges of the regime are reached but the agency could do more to avert or contain a crisis.

Perhaps the biggest thing is that elected legislators should set a monitorable objective. Independent agencies really can improve the credibility of commitments made by government, but only if we know what we want them to do and can track whether or not they are doing it.

Would those Principles affect anything much?

Yes. Here are just three examples.

They would challenge the acceptability of judges completely having completely overhauled the principles of competition policy a few decades ago. The legislation was vague and the views of economists had moved on, so the courts had room and reason to act. But, given our democratic values, this should have been work for elected politicians.

They suggest that role of some financial-market regulators in preserving a stable financial system needs either to be better insulated from politics (such as the SEC in the US) or subject to much clearer objectives (UK).

And they would restrict the roles and activities of central banks rather more than we have seen in recent years.

Is any of this realistic in actual democratic states?

Well, that’s the point of the book. There are no deep constitutional blockages, so it’s a question of whether we want to be governed in a way that’s consistent with our values. I’m hoping that people who see merit in my Principles for Delegation (or something like them) will cite many more examples than I can (or even know about), generating the kind of debate that is badly needed about how state power is allocated.

Anyway, surely something has to be done to bring the role of experts in government in line with our democratic commitments.

Why did you write the book?

I spent a good part of my central banking career helping to design regulatory and monetary regimes, none more important than the expansion of the Bank of England’s powers after the Great Financial Crisis. We resisted some powers, wanted others constrained, and had strong views on how the different responsibilities should be assigned to distinct committees so as to disperse power and focus incentives. I wanted to try to write down the values and considerations lying behind that. When I moved to Harvard in late-2013, I had the opportunity to do so.

Paul Tucker is a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and chair of the Systemic Risk Council. For more than thirty years, he was a central banker and regulator at the Bank of England and the Bank for International Settlements. He lives in London.

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